Experts in so-called honour killings — murders carried out to preserve family honour in the face of perceived disgrace — heralded the verdict as a step forward; a clear message that neither Canada’s courts nor its people will tolerate this type of crime.

“This is going to be a very good example,” said Amin Muhammad, a professor of psychiatry at Memorial University in St. John’s and author of the only Canadian study on honour killings, submitted to the federal government last year. “The government has realized that they should not entertain any defence with a strong honour crime theme. They have treated this on par with any murder, and that’s the beauty of this verdict.”

There have been at least 13 reported honour killings across Canada, Muhammad said, but the Shafia case stands out because it drew such intense, widespread media attention.

“This (verdict) may prevent such things again,” he said. “That may be wishful thinking ... but I hope that’s the case.”

But at least one Muslim women’s group says the way the Shafia case unfolded within and beyond the courtroom may have done more harm than good when it comes to public perception.

“I’m frustrated and fed up with the kind of emphasis and time that’s been spent calling it an honour killing,” said Alia Hogben, executive director of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women.

Almost from the beginning, the drowning deaths of Zainab, Sahar and Geeti Shafia, along with Mohammad Shafia’s first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, were intertwined with themes of family honour, religion, and cultural norms — something Hogben believes detracted from the fact that “this was murder. Murder, murder, murder.”

“The media attention in particular has been very much on this being something exotic, something foreign, as opposed to the fact that this was the murder of four women in Canada,” she said. “I think it was because that separated us from them. People want to believe it’s other people doing this. Canadians don’t do this.”

It’s rare for a coverage of a crime to fixate so strongly on motive, she added, citing the example of Marc Lépine’s 1989 shooting spree at École polytechnique in Montreal.

“We did pay a bit of attention to (Lépine’s motive), but in the end ... we focused on the deaths of those women. With (the Shafia case), I often felt that the deaths of the women and girls was not the major focus."

From a legal standpoint, the Shafia trial won’t be setting any important legal precedents. This according to veteran criminal defence lawyer Frank Pappas, who said the case was, at its core, a “standard, run-of-the-mill murder trial.”

“From a purely legal perspective, it’s a murder case like any murder case,” he said. “I don’t see how this case will change anything in terms of jurisprudence or Canadian law and how it’s interpreted.”

While the prosecution was not required to provide a motive to prove the Shafias’ guilt, it is “always preferable” to give the jury some logical explanation for why a crime took place, he added.

In the family’s former Montreal neighbourhood, Sunday’s verdict was greeted mainly with refusals to comment. On Bonnivet St., the tree-lined road in a mostly Italian neighbourhood of St. Léonard where the Shafias lived in a multiplex until their arrest, neighbours were tight-lipped over the news.

“There is no comment. I think it’s final,” said a woman who came to the phone in the house of Mario Carpanzano, directly across from the Shafias’ home. “Just leave it be.”